Watch the lecture live at Moore Lounge, Pearsons Hall. Can't make it to campus? Watch the lecture live online. Attendees are encouraged to bring a lunch!

"The most important metric used by the Selection Committee that determines invitations to the annual NCAA Basketball Tournament, also known as “March Madness,” is the Ratings Percentage Index, or RPI.

In a 2012 Journal of Sports Economics paper, Beloit College Economics Professor Bob Elder teamed with Troy University Economics Professor Scott Beaulier to critique the RPI and to suggest an alternative metric.

Elder and Beaulier derived their alternative metric, the Dominetric, from an earlier study in which two European economists, Laurens Cherchye of Leuven University in Belgium and Frederic Vermeulen of Tilburg University in the Netherlands, ranked cyclists in the Tour de France.

For his Lunchbox Series talk on Tuesday, March 18, Bob Elder will provide a brief overview of how Dominetrics works, arguing why it is more objective than the RPI.

He then will discuss the latest Dominetrics rankings, comparing the selections to the NCAA tournament field that Dominetrics would recommend to the actual RPI-influenced field announced by the NCAA Selection Committee on Sunday, March 16."